Weblog of Michael A. Hoffman II, Box 849, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83816. Author of Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare; The Israeli Holocaust Against thePalestinians (with Moshe Lieberman), and They Were White and They Were Slaves.Additional news about Hoffman and an archive of his writing, can be found at:revisionisthistory.org

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

'Holocaust Survivors' immune from war crimes charges?

HOFFMAN'S NOTE:For the word "partisan" in the following news report, substitute Hezbollah or Hamas. If this ex-partisan fighter, Fania Branstovsky, is innocent, as she claims, then so too are members of Hezbollah and Hamas ("heroes of the anti-Zionist resistance").---Holocaust survivors facing war-crimes trialsJewish Chronicle (JC) June 6, 2008By Dana GlogerElderly Jews say they are outraged that Lithuania is pursuing them over their wartime role asanti-Nazi partisansFania Branstovsky was just 20 when she joined the Jewish partisan movement fighting theNazis in her home country of Lithuania. In the Vilnius ghetto, she and her fellow partisanscarried out attacks against the occupying German forces. By the end of the war, almost herentire family

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more than 50 people

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had perished at the hands of the Nazis. Yet now, over60 years later, she is the one being branded unpatriotic, and is reportedly under investigationby Lithuanian authorities for alleged war crimes.National and local newspapers and television stations are referring to the 86-year-oldHolocaust survivor, who now works as a librarian at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, as a murdererand a terrorist. Earlier this year, the Vilnius-based newspaper Lietuvos Aidas called for her tobe put on trial. The allegation levelled against her is that during her time as a partisan, shecommitted crimes against Lithuanians. But she strongly denies that she and her partisancolleagues ever targeted groups of local people.

“It’s very upsetting and shocking,” says Branstovsk

y, a mother of two, with six grandchildrenand two great-

grandchildren. “We fought against the powers of the Nazis. Not against the

locals. The Nazis wanted to annihilate all Jews and all people who loved freedom, and I joined

the underground partisan organisation in September 1943 to defend myself and my people. It

was a matter of honour.”

Even with a possible war-

crimes prosecution hanging over her, she has no regrets. “I didn’twant all Jewish people to die with no resistance. I feel very proud and I’m

very glad that I had

the opportunity to do something for honour and humanity.”

She vows that the prospect of being put on trial for war crimes will not drive her out of her

country. “I’m very patriotic. I was born here and have always lived here. Of cour

se I amworried, but I am not planning to leave because of this. By doing this they want to rewrite

history.”

Branstovsky is not the only Holocaust survivor being pursued by the Lithuanian authorities.Yitzhak Arad, a historian and former chairman of Isr

ael’s Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, is

also being investigated over similar alleged crimes.Arad joined the partisan movement in the Vilnius ghetto during the war. His parents hadalready been taken by the Nazis two years earlier, eventually dying in Warsaw. So the teenage

Arad decided to try to make it alone. “The night before we had to go to the ghetto, I escapedto Belorussia [then part of the Soviet Union, now Belarus],” he recalls. “In doing that, I escaped

the killings. Forty members of my family we

re killed as well as many people from my village.”

He returned to Vilnius as a member of the pro-Soviet partisan movement, whose main activitywas sabotaging German trains. Having fought so hard to survive the Nazi killings, Arad, whosettled in Israel a

fter the war, says he is “upset and disappointed” at being branded a war

criminal.

“In doing this they are trying to rewrite history and to turn the murderers of thousands of Jewsinto heroes and the few survivors into criminals,” he says.

Although he has had no formal confirmation from the authorities that they are looking into hispartisan activities, or that a prosecution is planned, he says he has heard through otherchannels that a group of anti-Soviets in the country filed a complaint against him to Lithuanianprosecutors. This led to an investigation being launched. The local media have also reportedthat an investigation is under way, accusing both Arad and Branstovsky of massacring civiliansin the village of Kaniukai.The prospect of standing trial has, naturally enough, left Arad reluctant to return to his home

town. “I have not been back for two years, and I’m not planning on going back now,” he says.

If trials do go ahead, it seems that a third Jewish partisan could be the primary witness for the

prosecution. Rachel Margolis, founder of Vilnius’s Jewish museum, has written a memoir

recounting her escape from the ghetto and her time as a partisan. Extracts from her book, shefears, could be used as evidence by prosecutors.

Margolis, who lost her family in the Holocaust and now lives in Israel, was unavailable to talkto the JC. But according to Efraim Zuroff, director of the Jerusalem office of the SimonWiesenthal Centre, an investigator was sent to the address which she uses in Lithuania. Hesays the investigator interviewed Rachel Konstanian, the director of the Vilnius JewishMuseum, and told her that he was looking for Margolis in order to question her regarding aninvestigation into Fania Branstovsky.

Margolis’s cousin, Budd Margolis, wh

o lives in London, fears that the stress of going through atrial could prove life-

threatening to Holocaust survivors now in their eighties. “This is veryshocking and upsetting,” he says. “My cousin, as well as the other two people involved, are all

quite

elderly now, and it’s very unfortunate that they have to deal with this at this stage of their lives. It’s terribly unjust.”He adds that his cousin is now too scared to return to Lithuania. “She is worried she may getarrested.”Rachel Margolis’s mem

oir, which has been published in Lithuania, contains a description of how a group of partisans, including Fania Branstovsky, attacked a Nazi garrison in the village of

“Kanyuki”. She writes: “The partisans had surrounded the garrison, but the Nazis were

exceptionally well armed and beat off all attacks. They broke the flanks of the Jewishdetachments, and the partisans withdrew precipitously. Then Magid jumped up on a rock and

yelled: ‘We are Jews. We will show them what we are capable of. Forward, comrades!’ Thissobered the men up; they ran back and won.”

A willingness to prosecute alleged war criminals is something not often displayed by theLithuanian authorities. Even though around 212,000 of its Jews were killed, the Baltic countryhas only ever brought three of its citizens to trial over war crimes, two of whom

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KazysGimzauskas and Algimantas Dailide

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were convicted, but were excused imprisonment, in

Gimzauskas’s case because of illness, in Dailide’s because of advanced age. Dailide was 85, a

year younger than Fania Branstovsky is now.According to the Lithuania embassy in London, there are currently no plans to prosecuteBranstovsky. In an emailed statement, Minister Counsellor, Deputy Head of Mission Jonas

Grinevicius said: “There is no lawsuit

against Mrs Branstovsky and there are no charges by theProsecution General against Mrs Branstovsky, nor there is any other legal action against MrsBranstovsky initiated. Mrs Branstovsky is only asked to appear in the court hearings as awitness in the case of the massacre by Soviet partisans of peaceful inhabitants of Kaniukaivillage in Salcininkai district. The killing of 38 Kaniukai inhabitants occurred in January 1944, itwas committed by 120-

150 Soviet partisans.”

Lithuanian denials do not impress Efraim Zuroff. He has written a strongly worded letter toAsta Skaisgiryté

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Liauskienè, the Lithuanian ambassador in Israel. In it he accuses the

Lithuanian authorities of “launching a campaign to discredit Jewish resistance fighters by

falsely accusing them of war crimes in order to deflect attention from widespread Lithuanian